Entrepreneurs vs 'maximising man'

"[Mainstream] economic analysis of economic behaviour relies heavily on decisions made by [so called] rational units customarily assumed to be seeking ... profit maximisation and utility maximisation. ...
    "[And yet] the mark of success and viability is not maximum profits, but realised positive profits. It does not matter through what process of reasoning or motivation such success was achieved. The fact of its accomplishment is sufficient. This is the criterion by which the economic system selects survivors: those who realise positive profits are the survivors; those who suffer losses disappear.
    "The pertinent requirement—positive profits through relative efficiency—is weaker than 'maximised profits,' with which, unfortunately, it has been confused. Positive profits accrue to those who are better than their actual competitors, even if the participants are ignorant, intelligent, skilful, etc. The crucial element is one's aggregate position relative to actual competitors, not some hypothetically perfect competitors. As in a race, the award goes to the relatively fastest, even if all the competitors loaf. Even in a world of stupid men there would still be profits. 

    "Also, the greater the uncertainties of the world, the greater is the possibility that profits would go to venturesome and lucky rather than to logical, careful, fact-gathering individuals."

~ Armen Alchian, from his 1959 article 'Uncertainty, evolution, and economic theory'

"The purported conflict between property rights and human rights is a mirage—property rights *are* human rights."

"For decades social critics in the United States and throughout the Western world have complained that 'property' rights too often take precedence over 'human' rights, with the result that people are treated unequally and have unequal opportunities. Inequality exists in any society. But the purported conflict between property rights and human rights is a mirage—property rights are human rights."
          ~ Armen Alchian, from his entry on 'Property Rights' in The Concise Encyclopaedia of Economics

[Hat tip Stephen Hicks]